Over at the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal true crime and mystery author Harold Schechter shares his list of the top five books written about sensational murder trials. The piece is called "Killer Stories: Sensational murder trials are at their most transfixing in these works."The top five are:1. "The Murder of Helen Jewett" by Patricia Cline Cohen (Knopf, 1998).2. "Dead Certainties" by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1991).3. "The Minister and the Choir Singer" by William M. Kunstler (William Morrow, 1964)4. "Compulsion" by Meyer Levin (Simon & Schuster, 1956).5. "Kidnap" by George Waller (Dial, 1961).Schecther provides a one paragraph synopsis of each...
Picador Breaks the Ice: Will issue hardbacks and paperbacks simultaneously
I was wondering how long it was going to take a major publisher to come to their senses and release the hardback and paperback at the same time.Joel Rickett at the Guardian is reporting that beginning in the Spring of 2008 Picador will "release all new novels in paperback editions, alongside a small run of hardbacks, breaking with the trade convention of staggered publication dates."Andrew Kidd, publisher of the prestigious Macmillan imprint says:"When are we going to accept that we live in a [paperback] country; that only a tiny handful of authors command enough reader loyalty to achieve viable hardback...
Drink Books
Camper English has a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today on collectible cocktail books titled Bartenders shake and stir their way through cocktail history.English, who writes the booze blog Alcademics talks with Josey Packard, a bartender at Alembic in the Upper Haight who also studies recipe history and collector John Burton, owner and instructor of the Bartenders' School of Santa Rosa, about their interest in older cocktail booksHighlights:-The first known cocktail book is "How to Mix Drinks" by Jerry Thomas and was published 1862.-"Because of their proximity to sticky liquids, well-used cocktail books often don't hold up over time,...
Human Alphabet
Thanks to swissmiss for the lead
Changing Covers
In 1894, The Inland Printer, under the direction of Will Bradley, became the first American magazine to change its cover with every issue.Gallery of covers at Magazineart.orgThanks to Design Observer for the lead